


the best of us.

by cp035



Series: Tumblr Prompts [2]
Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-27
Updated: 2014-09-27
Packaged: 2018-02-18 23:13:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2365520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cp035/pseuds/cp035
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tumblr prompt: "I just really need to have you here right now"; in which Meryl dabbles in wedding planning but mostly putting up with her two sickeningly in love best friends for life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the best of us.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [footnoterphone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/footnoterphone/gifts).



> dedicated to footnoterphone; who loves inside jokes. this one's rife with the worst of them. enjoy!

 

It is January; four months before their wedding and three days after her twenty-eighth birthday; that Meryl swallows her pride and three Motrin to quell her splitting headache and drives thirty miles to _Welcome to Charlie and Tanith's!_ \- land.Proclaimed by a heirloom wooden sign underneath their old-fashioned mailbox that's ten times tackier than the sign in front of Lake Muskegon Adventureworld; _Welcome to Charlie and Tanith's!_ \- land is home to the _Emotional Roller Coaster of Joyful Exuberance for the Sake of the Boy_ ; the _Lover's Tunnel of What Could Have Been_ , and first and most importantly- the _Suburban Hidden Driveway from Hell_.

It's a masterpiece of snow-covered gravel which puts her tires through the ringer and her thoughts on pause while she sings along as loud as she can to her good old Mayday Parade CD. Meryl rolls down the window and sticks her hand outside in the frozen early morning to flip off some ninety-year-old man literally shaking his fist; presumably because she's being _improper_ and _disturbing the peace_.

 

She spends the next four minutes screaming with laughter and thanking God for tinted windows.

 

Retirement's been _hashtag good for her_.

 

So she _says_.

 

* * *

 

 

"I want to plan your wedding.", she tells Tanith, who looks like she walked out of the J.Crew fall catalog ( _current status:_ well, after this conversation- fodder for Meryl's parents' fireplace) while she spoons cookie batter on to a baking tin in their kitchen.

 

She lowers the spatula; dramatic Desperate Housewives-style where she also cocks her head and raises an eyebrow; and her newly-dyed blonde hair unwittingly tumbles down her shoulder _just so_.

 

"Well...we have...we hired a planner already. Jessica, from the-"

 

"-agency downtown, I know. But...my partner and my best friend are getting married!", Meryl squeals, sorority girl-on-rush-day-style. "I _need_ to be in the action. _Come on!_ "

 

Tanith frowns slightly, and lifts the spatula to her mouth to lick chocolate chips from the batter; deep in thought.

 

Her cheek is smeared with flour and a streak of peanut butter which Meryl does not feel the need to inform her of.

 

"You could be on the committee...I think. With Jacqui? Just...looking at venues and advising, you know?"

 

"You have a _committee_ for your wedding?"

 

Tanith's breath catches and she shakes her head. "I thought of it...because I...I mean; I heard that's how it's supposed to be done. It's probably silly. Sorry, I just don't know-"

 

"Oh no, it's not! That sounds wonderful. And you know- I'm the only one who's ever been able to reign in Jacqui White. _I bet_...", Meryl pauses to extend the olive branch (it looks like her, dipping her finger into the bowl of cookie batter) "-she wants a _lilac_ theme. _Lilac, and seafoam. Everyone looks like shit in seafoam._ "

 

" _Oh. My. God._ Did Charlie tell you?", Tanith squeals. "I can't stand it. I know she's his mother but- _ugh!_ Everyone hates me _enough_ without having to think I'll intentionally make them look like shit at my wedding."

 

She starts laughing and it's Meryl's turn for her words to be caught awkwardly at the end of her tongue. "Well, I don't think anyone _hates_ you...they're just-" ("-wondering why he isn't with me"- _Jacqui_ ; "-thinking you hold him back from a life away from skating"- _Big Charlie_ ; "kind of weirded out you and Charlie lasted this long because you kind of used to be a bigger slut than Fedor"- _paraphrased from Arctic Edge's veteran secretary,_ Rude-as-fuck _Rachel_ ) "- _jealous_.", is what she settles on, and Tanith just smirks.

 

"I know. I was _joking_ , Meryl. But seriously- who'd you hear it from? Please don't tell me Rachel the secretary has a better handle on gossip than I do.", she sighs, eyes rolling skyward while she pushes aside the baking pan in between them and begins to grease another for the remaining batter.

 

"Um...I heard from my Mom."

 

Here they are; two Olympic medalists; licking cookie batter from thier fingers and playing this game of _One of These Girls is Not Like The Other! One is insecure in her relationship and one has exactly zero fulfilling daily social interactions because her actual friends are on coasts! Which is Which_!; a carnival special of _Charlie and Tanith!_ -land.

 

"Oh. How is she these days?"

 

"Good."

 

"Great.", Tanith says with a Very Decisive Nod; which shakes her hair loose."I think I'm very much sold. I need you, Meryl Davis. Before my wedding turns into a Vineyard Vines catalog staged by Jacqui!"

 

"With all the groomsmen in _bowties_ like it's his first communion. Put my money on that."

 

" _Meryl, no!_ "

 

* * *

 

 

When she sees Charlie next, Meryl declares to him as the clamber through the gate on to the ice at Arctic Edge; " _I'm your wingman, Charlie White_."

 

"Really?", he chuckles, his hand warm in hers as the skate laps to warm up. "Because I nailed a pretty _impressive_ girl at home without any help and we're getting married. Why would I need a wingman now?"

 

"For the details.", Meryl says simply, with a tiny shrug. " _Words- dear boys, were invented for one purpose; to woo a woman. And in that endeavor; laziness will not do._ ", she quotes to the assembled five-am audience of exactly zero in the arena.

 

She found that gem on Instagram, and somehow it seems perfect for the moment.

 

Charlie scrapes to stop and whirls her into the center of his chest; where he holds her at the waist, and nuzzled into her neck, he whispers "-But I've _already_ proposed, Meryl Elizabeth. She thought my unintelligible grunting was _super_ hot and she said yes and _we boned_."

 

Despite herself, Meryl snorts with laughter. "You _boned_."

 

"Yeah, and you need to delete that dumb quotes app off your phone. For all our sakes. _Please_.", Charlie adds.

 

" _Oh, Charles Allen..._ ", she shoots back, pushing away against his square shoulders and skating backwards away from him as he laughs at center ice. "C'mere, buddy. I made us a list."

 

Charlie reads her list aloud as they lean against the boards, her arm resting at the small of his back while she sips from her water bottle and listens to his voice, interspersed with nervous giggles.

 

"You're planning my _wedding_. Like...you're my best man."

 

"I am better than any man, Charlie."

 

" _Really?_ "

 

"Yeah. _Really._ "

 

Charlie just shakes his head, fluffy curls bouncing up and down.

 

"See what you say when I _beat you_ to the other side, Meryl. Race you!", he shouts, and speeds away- her list still crumpled in his clenched fist before she can protest.

 

" _Fuck you, Charlie_!", she shoots back, and sets her mind to racing him to the blue line.

 

Choosing wedding colors that aren't an obvious reference to Meryl's skating costumes and a venue classy enough to whether several hours worth of white people dancing to the Macarena? Well, _One of These is More Important than the Others_ , and clearly- they're going to have to wait.

 

* * *

 

 

But, back to actual reality. For the next two months, Meryl really is going to wingman the hell out of her best friend- tux appointments and bachelor party planning and brunch with his mother and Tanith's incessant texts from New York which say things like " _You guys okay?_ " every couple of hours.

 

If the _Great Charlie and Tanith Union_ shall be Charlie; telling Tanith to _make sure she's wearing a seatbelt_ , and Tanith; telling Charlie to _make sure he stays hydrated_ \- Meryl tells herself she's going to find the cliff the girls jump off of in _The Sisterhood of The Traveling Pants_ and hold her own hand while she plummets into the ocean because this really can't be the rest of her life.

 

Whatever happened to a simple _'I Love You'?_ , she wonders- having grown up in a home where her parents never badgered each other with incessant texted and Skyped and phoned-in reminders to _Get 8 hours a night_ and _Don't have too many doughnuts (without me)!_ Face to face, the _Immense and Earth-Shattering Love Charlie has for Tanith (and vice versa)_ is a sickening cascade of both of them eating cream-cheese frosted cinnamon buns and smearing syrup all over Meryl's carefully selected non-lilac and non-seafoam color swatches; while she takes careful sips from a tumbler of steeped tea and spoons extra-small frozen yogurt into her mouth.

 

It's not about _not getting fat._ It's about not clogging her arteries with this _bullshit_ and dying of a heart attack at age 53 with no one's hand to hold. Not the last part matters nearly as much as the first, of course. Heart disease is America's Number One silent killer- says the two AM infomercial Meryl has to sit through before she can get on with the rest of last night's _Killer Wives_ marathon. People put alarms in their houses and hire security guards and take karate classes. She's just protecting herself; you see- from turning into a bouncy, sugared-up, mess in the middle of Westland Center mall, where a poster of Maks' visit last year still hangs high over the rafters of Cinnabon.

 

It's probably going to stay up there at least until the next decade, which is probably the same time Charlie and Tanith will break their _moony-eyed gazing_ into each other's kind-of green, kind-of blue eyes.

 

Surprisingly, it's still 2015 when they do just that, and Charlie's voice startles her out of imagining the minimum dozen ways she will _kill a man_ if she's got to be stuck in the _Charlie and Tanith's Grand Love Vortex_ for another moment at all. Meryl is vaguely aware of Tanith rising from her seat, Cinnabon trays in hand to go dump their wrappers and frosting cups in the trash, but mostly, she is focused; hyperfocused, really- on Charlie's voice.

 

"-and _I just really need to have you here right now_ , Meryl. I'm so _happy_ you're doing this for us because... you've been part of everything actually important in my _entire_ life and I'm so scared, you know? I love Tanith like I love-...well, she _deserves_ not to have a guy who fucks up. God...I hope you don't think I'm starting to go a little crazy."

 

"I've always thought you were a _little_ disturbed.", she teases. Charlie cracks his famous smile.

 

"But...Tanith deserves... _what she wants_ , buddy. And she wants you, so I don't think there's too much to be so worried about. You're supposed to leave the worrying to me. It's kind of my _thing_.", Meryl adds, and Charlie's smile only gets bigger.

 

They're laughing, hands twined together across the table, when Tanith circles back, and slides into their bench, molding into Charlie's side like she has belonged there her entire life, slinging her arm over across his shoulders.

 

" _I love you._ _Best girls in the whole world_.", he says in that teasing voice, laughter just at the tip of his throat.


End file.
